Thursday, September 27, 2012

The Year of the Mantis

I like the thought experiment “What would you study
if you could start your career over at some previous time knowing what you now
know?” The answers vary widely, but discounting the few that say “anything but
biology” or “investment banking” or the like, people usually talk about some
study organism that they think is really cool. For me, I have periodically
thought that it would be great to go back in time and discover and describe for
the first time those really bizarre animals that came to scientific attention
only recently: naked mole rats or gastric brooding frogs or coelacanths and so
on. At other times, I wish I could have been there to describe really cool
adaptive radiations of animals – with an obvious one being ants: honey pot
ants, leaf cutter ants, slave making ants, army ants, and so on. Recently,
however, a trip to the island of Kyushu in Japan crystalized another
possibility.

I have always thought praying mantises were really amazing
creatures: from their stretched bodies that can nonetheless fly to their deadly
front legs to their bizarrely mobile heads that look vaguely humanoid. (They
are apparently the only insect that can look over its shoulder.) But all of my
experience with them was from pictures in books or sequences in movies – like
the BBC one where you think it is going to eat something and then it instead
gets eaten by a chameleon. I had only ever seen one in the wild before but that
was when I was in line to get into a Lollapalooza concert in eastern Washington,
and so I didn’t really have much time for appreciation. This summer turned
things around.

The first thing that happened was that my 6 year-old
daughter, Cedar, found one in the field at the barn where my wife, Heather,
keeps her horse, Delmar. They brought it home and put it in a terrarium and we
began to feed it grasshoppers. It was deadly. We could put in 5 grasshoppers
and within just a half an hour they would all be dead – at one point the greedy
bugger had one in each arm – both alive and struggling. Most of the time, the
mantis would stalk the grasshopper and then lash out at the last second with
those arms of death but sometimes it would move above the grasshopper and then
leap on it. It is truly an awesome predator - and hours of entertainment both
parents and kids. Over the summer, its abdomen kept getting bigger and bigger
and then one day it laid an egg mass, so here’s hoping we have a cute clutch of
the little devils next spring. I can’t wait to release a bunch of baby
grasshoppers and watch the chaos.

A Quebec mantis (actually introduced from Europe).

The next thing that happened was that I started to find mantises
myself – first at Mt. St. Hilaire near Montreal where I was teaching a field
course (see the blog entry here)
and then also at the aforementioned barn. In each case, I would spend a long
time photographing them and following them around. I never saw them catch
anything in the wild but I did get a great appreciation for how their mobile
head makes you feel like you are interacting with them. If you get too close,
their head swivels around and looks right at you. No other insect can give you
the same feeling of communication. Eerie, it is.

The Hiroa-Dai karst tableland near Fukuoka.

Then this last week I went to Japan, where I participated in
a symposium on contemporary evolution at the annual meeting of the Japanese
Genetics Society. The symposium was organized by Yuya Fukano and my trip – and
that of fellow invitee Pierre-Olivier Cheptou – was funded by Tet Yahara with
organization help from Makiko Mimura. As most of the meeting was in Japanese,
we had plenty of time for excursions – and one of these was to Hirao-Dai, a
karst table land near Fukuoka. Along with three Japanese students and postdocs,
Pierre-Olivier and I had a great time walking around and looking at a whole
series of huge arthropods: wicked looking spiders, great carpenter bees,
massive hornets (which apparently kill more people in Japan than any other
animal), butterflies as big as birds, katydids spanning your palm, huge
grasshoppers, and yes brobdingnagian mantises. So when folks say that
everything is smaller in Japan, you can correct them by saying everything but
the insects. When these mantis turned their heads to look at me, I
involuntarily pulled back.

I see you.

Hanging out.

Come to my arms.

The mantises were everywhere – or maybe it was just that one
student (Ryosuke Iritani) was particularly good at spotting them. I decided
that if he were a superhero he would have to be called Mantis Boy – he even
looked a little bit like a mantis. (Come to think of it, mantis-like qualities
would seem better suited for a villain.) In addition to finding a number of
individuals of two species just hanging about apparently waiting for a hapless
hopper to wander by, we found one that was munching on prey it had just caught,
which brings me to a particularly macabre habit of mantises – they quite
happily eat their prey alive. As I was taking pictures of this mantis and its
prey, a huge carpenter bee, I noticed that the bee was still moving despite
having almost all of its’ abdomen eaten away. And the mantis was quite happily
tucking in while the bee continued to struggle – if a bit feebly. This isn’t a
rare thing, I think, as it regularly happens with our pet mantis at home. In
fact, I can still vividly remember it slowly engulfing the leg of a live and
struggling grasshopper like we would eat corn on a cob. Presumably they aren’t
being intentionally cruel – sometimes they first remove the head – but rather they
are just indifferent to the struggling and simply start to eat whatever part is
closest. But it is still pretty hideous stuff from the perspective of humans,
which always at least have the courtesy to kill their food first - right?

Yum. Nice and fresh.

Humans eat many curious things, especially in Asia. On the
second night after arriving in Japan, we went out to dinner and were looking at
the menu. Pictured (thankfully given the lack of English) were a whole series
of succulent looking meats tastefully arranged on plates. I asked what they
were and was surprised to be told in a matter-of-fact fashion that they were
whale. Really? Since Japan only engages in “scientific whaling,” I presume
this one provided some valuable scientific insight into cetaceans – perhaps it
was the N that made P less than 0.05. Seeing whale on the menu without fanfare brought
back memories of Norway, where my friends (Ole and Irene Berg) served me home-cooked
whale. I felt guilty enough at the time to
call Heather and ask her permission to eat it. I think she would have said no
if I hadn’t been standing in their kitchen with the food on the table. The
second time I ate whale was also in Norway, this time at a restaurant where I
didn’t find out what it was until after having a few bites. So I told these
stories to my Japanese hosts, particularly emphasizing the absurdity of calling
Heather to ask permission. Then in hopes that I wouldn’t have to call Heather, I
flipped the menu to see if something on the other side could divert attention
away from the whale. “And what are these I asked?” After a brief consultation,
the answer was “horse.” I had to laugh: if these were the only two things on
the menu, Heather would probably call me to insist that I eat the whale.

On the way back to my hotel after having dinner, I met Tet
Yahara and Jun Kitano, who took me for a second dinner and a fifth and sixth
sake. As we walked into the new restaurant/bar, I noticed a tank of squid.
Pretty cool I thought, much better than tropical fish, and then I realized what
they were there for. I commented to Tet, “So I suppose people get to pick their
own squid out for dinner.” Half an hour later and without warning (to me at
least) a squid arrived at the table. It looked VERY fresh. It was lying there
in a somewhat life-like pose and its mantle had been sliced into a series of
delicate an incredibly symmetrical sections that were still in the proper
position. Looking closer I noticed then squid was still moving its tentacles
and had waves of color moving across it. Was I about to channel a praying
mantis.

So it seems to me that this must be – at least for me – the
year of the mantis, and if I were to start all over again perhaps I might make
it the career of the mantis. But then I did also see mudskippers and tiger beetles,
which were almost as cool. Maybe I can start over multiple times.

4 comments:

Apparently people in Japan (and Korea, my wife told me this) regularly die as a result of eating octopus tentacles that are still sufficiently alive to autonomously clamp onto the throat and choke the person to death.

I used to catch mantises all the time when I was a kid; in rural upstate NY they are commonplace. But still very cool. :->

Yes, we have many big insects. One of my most favorites is the moth of Saturniidae (http://www.geocities.jp/issun_no_mushi/yasan.htm). While the biggest species Attacus atlas ryukyuensis is restricted to Okinawa, Samia cynthia pryeri is rather common in main islands including Kyushu. When I was a boy, it was my ordinary life to enjoy catching this big moth. Actias aliena is another common species, having beautifully light greenish wings. Another one I favor, although not big in size, is scorpionfly. It is describe in literature that scorpion flies eat dead insects, but in my observation, at least some species in Japan are active predators often eat even Mantis. I hope you could come back and see these insects.